Election Integrity Will Make America Great Again

John and Andy Schlafly05-17-2017

While the Washington Post searches high and low – mostly low – for another Watergate, it is nowhere to be found. The incessant attempts by President Trump’s enemies to fabricate a scandal fail to recognize that the American people choose our president, not a handful of media elites in the swamp.

The remarkable tranquility in the stock market belies the hysterical cries of disaster emanating from Washington, D.C. The financial markets evidently think nothing of the gossipy allegations of imaginary wrongdoing in the White House’s dealings with Russia, and the American people think nothing of it also.

The real news is that President Trump has acted to improve the integrity of our elections, and thereby ensure our future prosperity against the foes of freedom. The top priority is to eliminate the loopholes that facilitate illegal voting.

Last Thursday President Trump issued an Executive Order creating the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, to safeguard our election system that the Obama Administration left in disrepair. President Trump is making America great again by taking steps to end illegal voting in our country.

This new commission will be formally headed by Vice President Mike Pence, and its driving force will be its vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, whose energy and expertise are unequaled on this topic. For more than a decade the Honorable Kobach has been advocating, designing, and implementing reforms to stop the rampant illegal voting that occurs.

Kobach's Kansas is one of two states where state law requires proof of citizenship from persons registering to vote. Since Kobach began enforcing that sensible law, some 30,000 people left their voter registrations incomplete because they were unable to prove U.S. citizenship.

Secretary Kobach has also promoted wider use of the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck for catching people who are registered to vote in more than one state. Recently he obtained the conviction of a Kansan who voted for Colorado's Amendment 64 to legalize marijuana.

One need look no further than Wisconsin to see the positive results of voter integrity reforms. In the 2016 presidential election Wisconsin enforced strong new voter ID requirements to prohibit willy-nilly voting by illegals, felons, out-of-staters, and double-voters who happen to wander by a polling booth.

The Wisconsin voter ID law in effect for this past presidential election stamped out voter fraud, and supporters of Hillary Clinton are furious about it. They claim that as many as 300,000 people were unable to vote in Wisconsin due to this good law.

That’s baloney, of course, as nowhere near 300,000 or even 30,000 were turned away by the polling booths in Wisconsin for lack of a voter ID. Instead, many thousands of Democrats obviously stayed home rather than cast their ballot for pro-abortion, pro-immigration, pro-bad-trade-deals Hillary Clinton, whom even Bernie Sanders defeated there.

Wisconsin is a mixture of the Rust Belt and sentiments of the Bible Belt, a combination of religious faith and a longing for return of manufacturing jobs. Trump’s campaign message resonated perfectly there, where the massive turnout at his rallies confirmed the genuine groundswell of support for him and for down-ballot candidates like Senator Ron Johnson who endorsed Trump.

Nearly 3 million people cast their ballots in Wisconsin in this past presidential election. Yet voter turnout overall was down by 91,000 people, as huge numbers of Democrats stayed home, including 41,000 fewer votes in the Democratic stronghold of Milwaukee.

As with many elections, Trump’s final margin of victory was quite close in Wisconsin, less than 23,000 votes, and the margin was even closer for many Republican candidates down-ballot. Thousands of illegal votes could swing a close election like this or force a recount, and indeed liberals did demand a recount afterwards that could have impacted our entire Nation.

But thanks to Wisconsin’s strong new voter ID law, not enough illegal votes could possibly have been cast to swing the result to Hillary. Wisconsin’s law prevented double voting by out-of-staters, fraudulent votes on behalf of dead people, balloting by illegal aliens, and improper voting by felons.

Wisconsin requires a valid in-state drivers’ license, with a photo ID, in order to vote there. This is the same requirement for passing through security at airports, for entering most government buildings, and for opening a new bank account.

Safeguarding our elections is just as important as securing the entry into government buildings, and the integrity of the presidential election in Wisconsin was what it should have been in every state. Legal voters decided the outcome there, not the inaccurate polls that predicted Hillary would win it easily.

It is essential to improve the integrity of our elections and repair the holes in our rickety system of casting ballots, and President Trump’s creation of the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity is welcome relief. With so much hoopla about securing the confidentiality of routinely classified information, it is even more important to secure the integrity of our elections.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) whose 27th book, The Conservative Case for Trump, was published posthumously on September 6.